The reunion

As if stung by a tarantula, I pulled myself up out of my wheelchair and was at the balustrade in two steps that separated us from the lower part of the room. The pain was forgotten.

Without question, it was indeed Morag. The damned traitor had been playing us from the beginning and we had fallen for it.

Or was it just me?

Legolas must have known something, after all, he was several thousand years old. One should have developed a certain knowledge of human nature. At least he read me like an open book.

Sattler stepped next to me. "You seem to have already had an encounter with him."

He didn't need to phrase his sentence as a question - it was obvious that I knew Morag.

"Indeed." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nod but remain silent. Why didn't he probe further? Had he been expecting this? What did he know?

I frowned until I remembered what he had said earlier: he assumed that Morag was Legolas. Hence his victorious expression. "Sorry to disappoint you, but that's not the elf."

Sattler's head turned abruptly in my direction. "It's not?"

"No."

I heard him suck in a sharp breath and slowly turned to face him. Partly to provoke him, partly because my wound hurt like hell and I didn't want to strain it.

Sattler had his arms crossed and a vein was throbbing at his right temple. So there he was again: the impatient, suspicious, short-tempered agent who was always on the verge of climbing the walls.

In the seconds we looked into each other's eyes, I realized we had more in common than I would have thought. Sattler was as much in the dark as I was. But he was probably doing so under greater outside pressure. Perhaps his boss had given him a deadline to meet, and the more convoluted this case became, the more nervous he got. But that also meant to me that he was becoming more dangerous with each unexpected turn.

I broke eye contact and looked back up at Morag's pixelated face. "He helped us escape from your people. Legolas knows him, but I'm sure he doesn't trust him."

That was jumping to conclusions, but I just had to say it. Legolas could not be in cahoots with Morag. I wasn't willing to believe that. True, he had manipulated me all along, bending the truth to make me function the way he wanted, but one thing he had never done was lie to me outright.

"Let it be our concern to find out who he trusts and who he doesn't." He signaled to David, who gently pushed me back into the wheelchair. "Take her downstairs, David. I'll be right behind you."

The bodyguard spun me around in the wheelchair and headed for the door without another word. "Hey, where do you want me taken? Sattler?" I tried to look around but failed at the injury on my arm and groaned in pain and frustration.

Each time he felt I had told him enough, he had me delivered like a parcel to where he thought I was needed next. It didn't even occur to him that I would like to know what was waiting for me. Or he didn't care.

I bit my lips, but didn't say another word. It was useless anyway.

David pushed me back down the hall to the elevator. As we shot up so fast that I felt pressure on my ears, I wondered how likely it was that I would ever see Legolas again. And whether I even wanted to.

Our relationship, if it could be called that, had been more than tenuous from the start. If he pulled in one direction, you could be sure I would take a running start in the other. Why this was that way, I could not name with certainty. All I knew was that one second I was firmly convinced that he wouldn't hurt me and had only the best of intentions. And the next... well, I felt the need to stake him alive.

I wondered if we would ever come to a common ground on this basis. I highly doubted it, but my intuition told me that it wasn't Sattler who would fix my life. And after all, the elf had proven time and again that he cared about my life and survival. For what reasons I could not be bothered for the time being. As long as it did not change, I still ran best with him. Only unfortunately I had no idea whether the status quo still existed after my renewed escape.

I wanted to trust him, but could I really do that without further ado? I couldn't shake the feeling that everyone in this game was fighting only for themselves - except me, because I didn't know how to reach my goal. And that's why I let myself be harnessed to every cart without making a step forward myself.

When I thought about it, I had to admit that with all the riddles I had completely lost sight of my own wishes. Just now, for example: I had been so busy defending Legolas that I had forgotten to remind Sattler that he had promised me something. Whether his word was worth anything was a moot point. But I should have insisted. And I hadn't.

I shook my head.

So the new premise was clear: I would only help if I stopped being pushed around, if Sattler's promise was kept, if I could finally go back home. Healthy egoism, so to speak.

The elevator doors opened and cold neon light greeted us. The hallway in front of me looked exactly like the one we had just left. If I hadn't known better, we might as well have been going in circles.

David pushed me out and after we left the first security door behind, my surroundings seemed more like your average office hallway. Every ten feet, two doors branched off the hallway. One of them opened at that moment.

"David, good to see you!" The voice belonged to a woman and she looked extremely familiar. I had seen her before. I just couldn't for the life of me remember where.

I stared at her as she talked quietly to the bodyguard. "...Captured... amazing that it worked... For two hours..."

The individual snippets of conversation wafting by my ear made no sense, and I was also far too busy trying to remember who this woman was. It wasn't until she turned to me with a smile as well that the scales fell from my eyes. "You're the policewoman!"

"Nice to see you again, too, Ina."

"Nice is something else."

Without acknowledging my venomous reply, she turned back to David. "Bring her in. The interrogation should start in fifteen minutes."

The interrogation? From whom? Me?

I felt my heart do an unpleasant hop. Hadn't Sattler said that he assumed there was nothing more I could tell them? After all, they already knew everything about me. What could I possibly tell them now? And more importantly, if I couldn't think of anything, what would they do with me?

All these thoughts flew frantically through my head like little birds while David pushed me into a darkened room. Only now did I notice that the room did not look like one would imagine an interrogation room to look like. It reminded me more of the kind of room where those who listened to the interrogation sat and watched the gangsters through a mirrored screen.

I looked to my right.

Sure enough, there it was. Apart from that, however, only a table with a microphone bolted to the wall populated the room, which made it look spartan.

The door opened and Sattler joined us with the policewoman and two other men. So I was not to be interrogated, I was to watch! Although I was reassured by the fact that I was sitting on this side of the mirror, still: Who would they interrogate?

Sattler bent over the microphone and said, "Show them in."

And then it was time. My pulse quickened as two men were led in, both wearing a bag over their heads and handcuffed behind their backs. The thugs who accompanied them pushed them onto two chairs and then positioned themselves behind them. Simultaneously, they grabbed the cloth and freed the men from their masks.

My heart stopped. One of them was Morag. And the other was Legolas.